National News & Information >May 2008 Features

The idle thoughts of an idle editor by Jerry Flay

70 pound trout.....

When I first came to NZ, some seven years ago, I was a reasonable fisherman. Throughout the chalk streams and spring fed lakes of southern England, I had angled with moments of success.

I had heard that NZ boasted some excellent trout fishing, so I looked forward to dazzling the locals with my sophisticated UK skills. Upon arrival I settled in then headed down to Turangi, primarily to stock up on tackle and fill the freezer with smoked trout. A weeks worth of daily limits should do it, I thought.

To say that I fell flat on my face in that first week would be something of an understatement. To suggest that I did not fill the freezer would be accurate, although again, hardly doing the scale of my failure justice.

In fact, I caught nothing. I didn’t even have a bite. I had no idea about local conditions, local techniques, and the psyche of local fish. It was an abjectly humiliating experience, and I considered giving it away.

But I was resilient; I stuck to it, and after a while I started to catch fish. Great fish, hard fighting silver bullets, and I began to be slightly scornful of my experiences, and catches in the UK. I certainly forgot a lot of the techniques.

And now I am heading back for the first time in 7 years, for a 3 week visit, and of course all my old fishing pals have been busy arranging a day here, an afternoon there and so on. In short, it’s going to be a bit of a fishathon, and after hearing of my exploits amongst the wilds of NZ, great things are expected of me on the more sedate waters of the UK.

Now personally I don’t think I have exaggerated that much when bragging of my catches over here – I mean, there could be 70 pounders lurking in the depths of Lake Taupo, couldn’t there? And I was present at the World Champs, albeit as a spectator. But somehow, my mates back home seem to have got the impression that I have become something of a guru.

And I have just realised I am going to have to learn it all from scratch again. You don’t need to be Nostradamus to see what’s going to happen.

Of course, I have a set of brilliant excuses lined up – I will be blaming everything from jet lag to global warming to the Labour government (theirs, not ours). But it is just possible that one or two of the shrewder ones may see through this and begin to suspect the truth – that I am just an average fisherman who is prone to grotesque exaggeration. I will be unmasked, revealed as a fraud, and no doubt shunned on the banks of the Test and the Itchen by the Duke of this and the Earl of that.

And it could be even worse!

I may well be challenged to a duel by the water baillie if I employ a Tongariro Bomb whilst chasing sea trout on the Dart. I’ll probably be arrested for having three flies on my line in the upper reaches of the Welsh Dee. And god only knows what fate awaits me if I make the cardinal sin of chatting to a complete stranger in a friendly manner on the river bank - deportation, I expect. They’ll probably suspect me of being a Woolly Bugger!

So it’s going to be interesting, and it’s going to be challenging, but what the hell, it’s going to be fishing.!

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